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Abstract
The Uruguay Round agreement on agriculture was a milestone, bringing this important
sector under the disciplines from which it had escaped in the early days of the GATT. The
agreement limits the distortions that countries may impose on: market access, on export
subsidization and domestic support. In this paper, we evaluate the direct impacts of each
of these limits, and then assess the economic implications of the agreement. Our
conclusion is that the gains from the agriculture agreement were reduced considetably by
the slippage which occurred in its implementation. They remain important, however, and
are estimated to account for around a third of the global income gains from the
liberalization achieved in the Round, even though formal modeling of the outcome omits
the important gains from reductions in the variability of agricultunll protection. Perhaps
most importantly, the agreement provides a basis for future liberalization.